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Today I’m spending some time at the Plug&Play Expo in Sunnyvale and I have to say I’m impressed. There are almost 40 startups presenting and showcasing their services and products and some of them definitely rock. I mean, many services I’m coming across really solve a problem and add value to your internet experience as well as your “normal” life.

One of them is Cooliris. In a nutshell, they offer a plugin/extension for the most popular web browsers which let you get access to web content from any website and in particular for those containing rich multimedia content in a very effective and way.

They basically provide you a 3D view of the content that you can browse and manage very easily. You can also share it by email simply by a drag an drop.

In the example below, I just made as search “san francisco” on SmugMug. CoolIris immediately provided me with the results of the search in a unique 3D interface through which I can browse photos, share them or jump to the original web address.

You can also switch to a filmstrip view similar to that provide by Adobe LightRoom.

Major serach engines are available, Google, Yahoo, YouTube, Photobucket, Amazon, Flickr, Smugmug. Down here the same search (”san francisco”) with YouTube. As a result, I get all the videos related to that keyword.

If your website is “cooliris enabled” your visitors will be able to see your content in a very attractive and easy-to-use way. A Wordpress plugin is available too, you can can choose what content you want to show to your blog readers by setting up a stunning slideshow available from your blog.

There is much, much more and I highly recommend to try it out. Really a great service which makes browsing a complete new experience. Kudos to Cooliris for this wonderful and very useful application.

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Technorati Tags: browsing, cooliris, facebook, Flickr, Google, luca filigheddu, Photobucket, Search, smugmug, yahoo, YouTube

Image via CrunchBase, source unknown

It looks like Microsoft is playing hard to strengthen his position in the search and ecommerce sector.

They just announced they bought Ciao.com for $486 million. Ciao.com is a popular price comparison site and a public company (Greenfield) in Europe where users write reviews of any kind of digital good and where you can find the best deal for your online purchases.

Microsoft is far behind Yahoo and Google in the search market and this move is aimed to try to increase its market share quickly, after the much discussed no-deal with Yahoo.

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Technorati Tags: Ciao.com, deal, Europe, luca filigheddu, microsoft, Price comparison service, yahoo

I’m trying to force myself to use the new search engine Cuil more and more, but at the end of the day the story is always the same: NO RELEVANCE.

Let’s try this: what is the most relevant link if I search for my name on a search engine? I don’t have any doubt, MY BLOG.

Ok, let’s see what happens.

Google

The results provide by Google make a lot of sense. My blog is the result #1 with the About page shown just below so that if someone wants to get information about myself can easily find what he is looking for. Very good.

Live Search

Live Search’s results are not bad, with my about page above my blog. The strange thing is that the eComm page when there is my bio as one of the speakers of the conference is the #1 result. I would say that I prefer Google, but the relevance of these results is still very high.

Yahoo

The result #1 with Yahoo is my about page, above the blog home page. It’s fine, it works very well, definitely as good as the Google one.

Altavista

I don’t know if there are people still using Altavista, anyway the results provided by this search engine are exactly like those by Yahoo. Very good.

Cuil

Last but not least, here is Cuil. Ok, where is my blog? Where is my about page? The first results are two posts by Jeff Pulver then a news by Jajah, then all the posts written by Alec Saunders with the tag “luca filigheddu” and so on. Relevance equals to ZERO. The worst one.

All that said, where do they want to go? Who can ever think to switch from any of the search engines above to Cuil?

Ok, maybe it’s me, trying with other names I saw that sometimes (I mean, sometimes..) it works better, but it’s still much far from Google and the others.

Do you want a very bad result? Try to search for Tom Keating… You get the football player link to Wikipedia… with the photo of Tom Keating from TMCNet!!!

Please…

Technorati Tags: altavista, cuil, Google, live search, luca filigheddu, search engine, yahoo

Andy Abramson wrote an interesting piece today about the just announced Jajah-Yahoo deal. He wrote some points I was thinking about while writing my post on the deal this morning.

Yahoo bought Dialpad a couple of years ago and let Jeff Bonforte, man behind Yahoo Messenger and former SIPPhone developer, leave the company very easily, part of the laid off which took place a couple of months ago.

I call it bad management. When you are not able to leverage your past investments in infrastructure, services and people, I call it bad management. I agree with Andy, big deal for Jajah but bad management on Yahoo’s side.

Technorati Tags: andy abramson, jajah, luca filigheddu, yahoo

Frederik Hermann, global marketing director at Jajah, sent me an email today informing that Yahoo! just selected Jajah to offer voice services to their over 97 millions Yahoo! messenger users. Pc to Phone and Phone to PC services (”PhoneIn” and “Phone Out”) will leverage Jajah’s network infrastructure as well as customer care and payment processes.

It looks like a major deal for Jajah who is clearly expanding their business model by offering all-inclusive “wholesale” packages thanks to their main deal with Deutsche Telecom which occurred last year. 

I noticed that Jajah’s website got a major update as well, which makes it more institutional rather than consumer oriented only. Good job.

Technorati Tags: jajah, luca filigheddu, messenger, yahoo

I’m happy to announce that Hictu! is now part of Yahoo. After a long negotiation, we finally got to the point!

Congratulations to all the team! Here is the official announcement with more details. 

UPDATE: Hictu! is now part of Microsoft…. 

Technorati Tags: april fools' day, hictu, luca filigheddu, yahoo